NORFOLK

[167] NORFOLK is another shire of the Danelagh, and is nearly
as flat as a table everywhere, except at the north
corner of the Wash coast, where some chalk downs end in
Hunstanton Cliffs. King's Lynn, at the mouth of the
Great Ouse, is the port for this part of Norfolk.

Norfolk, like Lincoln, is a great farming county;
indeed there is no English county in which the farmers
are more skilful in the management of their land. One
thing they are particular about is to have different
crops growing in the same field in following years.
Thus a field yellow with ripened corn one year might be
sweet with bean blossom the next, and then be a potato
or a turnip field. The reason for this is that all
plants do not take the same kind of food out of the
earth; what wheat will not touch, the potato will take
and be thankful for. So the farmers arrange a round,
or, as it is called, a rotation of crops, to follow one
another in order. Sometimes a four-shift, sometimes a
five-shift rotation is employed; that is, four or five
different crops follow one another; and then the round
begins again.

Our four kinds of corn—wheat, barley, oats, and rye—as
well as beans and peas, potatoes, turnips, and carrots,
are all grown in Norfolk. There are prettier crops too:
fields of red clover; fields of the crocus flower, from
which saffron is made; fields of the delicate blue flax
flower; and other fields, gay with the bright blue,
handsome flower of the chicory plant,
[169] the large roots of which are cut into squares and
roasted, and then ground into chicory.

The very finest Christmas turkeys come from Norfolk,
and geese just as good; while sheep and bullocks, pigs
and horses, all get an excellent living in this rich
shire.

Of the chief towns of the county, Wymondham and
Attleborough, East Dereham, Aylesham, Diss, and
Thetford, a town of fame in Saxon days, with several
others, are market-towns.

Norwich is a pleasant city, built on a hill, a thing to
be proud of in this shire. The city covers a good deal
of ground, and there are openings planted with trees,
from among which the towers of the churches rise; so
that an old writer speaks of it as "Norwich (as you
please), either a city in an orchard, or an orchard in
a city." The keep of the ancient castle remains. The
cathedral is a good specimen of Norman architecture.

The eastern counties have always been friendly to the
people of the low-lying lands over the sea. These
Flemings have been for centuries famous as skilful
weavers, and the Conqueror brought over some of them,
who settled in Norwich, to teach their art to his
English subjects. Later, Edward III. invited parties of
these same Flemish weavers to come to England, for the
king thought it a pity that the fine wool of the
English sheep, the finest anywhere, should be sent to
Flanders to be made into cloth. Many of these remained
in Norwich, and taught the citizens how to make cloth,
and in later days crape. Still later, in Elizabeth's
reign, more than 3000 of these same people came to seek
a home in this city. They were Protestants, and were so
persecuted by the Catholic king of Spain and the
Netherlands that they had no
[170] rest in their own land. Norwich made room for them, and
busy and useful inmates they proved, bringing with them
this time a new manufacture, a stuff made of a mixture
of silk and wool.

Norwich was at one time Norwich-by-the-Sea, and the
spot where part of Yarmouth now stands was under the
sea when the Conqueror came. The Yare, at the mouth of
which Yarmouth, or Yare~mouth, is built, fell then into
a broad estuary, another Wash perhaps, which reached
inland as far as Norwich. By degrees, however, the sea
and river between them formed a line of sandbanks
across the mouth of this estuary. Though the river
still made its way out, the tide could no longer get
in; the waters were thus drained off, and what was at
one time an arm of the sea is now covered with villages
and busy farms.

This new land still lies very low, and the Yare widens
out into a sort of lake, four miles across, before it
reaches the sea. The Waveney and the Bure, which join
the. Yare near Yarmouth, both flow through very-low
land, and spread out into many pools.

Eastern Norfolk is full of these pools, or broads, as
they are called in the county; pools often three yards
deep, fringed with tall bulrushes. These pools are
mostly in lonely spots, and are the haunts of water-hen
and wild duck, heron and kingfisher; indeed the wild
fowl and the fish have it pretty much to themselves.
The rivers overflow in heavy rains, and leave the
broads filled when they return to their banks.

Yarmouth is a busy, pleasant trading town, which has
always had so much to do with foreign sailors that it
is like a foreign town itself. It has many
herring-houses, where the herrings caught off the coast
are cured and made into "Yarmouth bloaters." The
grand
[171] church of St. Nicholas here is the largest parish
church in England.

If the sea has been turned out on the east side, it is
making steady advances into Norfolk on the north. At
the village of Sherringham, near Cromer, it has gained
as much as fifty feet in five years; the sea has
gradually undermined the cliffs, and now ships may
anchor where villages once stood. Cromer is a charming
watering-place, where the sun may be seen to rise and
set in the sea. Admiral Lord Nelson was a native of
Norfolk.

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